Wednesday, September 11, 2013

As we were running out of time (hehe) we decided we've seen enough and skip the rest of El Salvador. So we took a shuttle and many immigration stamps later we made it to Honduras. The lovely town of Copan Ruinas (that is really the name of it) is famous for its, you guessed it, ruins. As we only wanted to stay two night's we had to choose between hot springs and more mayan ruins. So we went bathing ^^
We had a lovely day soaking in the hot pools and left early the next morning. Really early for Melanie ;). The bus took us to San Pedro Sula, which is supposed to be the most dangerous city in the world. But nobody bothered us or our Piñata at the bus stop ;). Another bus and then a ferry ride took us to Utila... more to come!

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Note on our own behalf: I finally found time to build a mobile version of our blog. If you visit it with your mobile device it will ask you if it should take you to the new version. As always this is still a work in progress, let me know if something doesn't work. So far I tested it on my WP8 and Melanies iPhone.

Monday, September 9, 2013

La Sombra in el Tunco is definitely a good choice! They have different rooms from 7USD/CHF for the dorm (where the toilet spits back at you when you flush) to private rooms with bathroom up to 25 USD/CHF. As always you can negotiate a better price if you stay longer.

There is a small pool & a kitchen that everyone can use, a good opportunity to save money and meet people. The only negative thing was the drain which had an awful smell!

Thursday, September 5, 2013

When Melanie landed back in Guatemala I was waiting for her with a little present, a Minion Piñata! Since then he has been travelling with us ^^
To get to El Salvador in comfort and style we booked a seat on one of the first class coaches. After chicken busses and cramped shuttles this was quite an upgrade. Big comfy seats like in the business class of an airplane, a proper meal, spotty internet over wifi and two good movies on the multimedia system. We arrived late at night in San Salvador and didn't see much of the city (besides the many armed guards) as we left the next morning for the pacific coast. Thats how we ended up in Playa El Tunco. A sleepy beach town with not much to do besides surfing and chilling out. In our hostel we met Danica & Joël and Marco, all three from Switzerland. So our plan to avoid our fellow citizens failed completely ;)

We tried our luck at surfing again and had our previous experience confirmed: its exhausting ;)
From surfing the net about possibilities in El Salvador back in Antigua I had stumbled upon a guy offering moto and quad tours. As it turned out he was based just a couple of minutes away from were we where staying. When Joël and Marco heard of my plans they where aboard immediately. So we shot Guillermo a message and he came and picked us up. After arriving at his finca/shed/shack we geared up and got a first lesson in driving a quad with manual transmission. As none of us has driven a big bike before he was reluctant to give us one of the dirt bikes =/ So we headed out by quad first. After a while my quad died on me, it could only go at 10-20% speed which you had to apply carefully or it would choke and die. As I didn't had the feeling for this Guillermo traded his dirt bike against my quad. Wohoo, finally some bike action. Later we stopped at a nice little restaurant in the mountains for lunch.
One of us went back to this place the other day on his little scooter, just to watch a soccer game, which he missed and then got stuck up there and had to leave his scooter and then spent a lot of money and time to get it back. It wasn't Joël ;)
Guillermo fixed my quad and we headed back to his place where he would finally let all of us have a go on his dirt bikes. Which was super fun! As my GoPro I had taken along was full we headed down to our hostel where we showed off in our moto gear on our dirt bikes ^^ After grabbing my camera we headed back up into the hills/moutains for a final photo session. He had three different sized motos: 80cc, 125cc and 250cc. As I had driven the 250cc earlier I started of with it but soon we exchanged bikes. The 80cc was just a little more than a pocket bike! It was super fun to drive around, with your knees sticking out on the side and your feet touching the tarmac in the corners ^^

Danica & Joël had met a Marcial before on their travel and he has a house up in the hills overlooking El Tunco. So we invited ourself to a BBQ at his place ^^